Birthday Girl

Happy 7th Birthday Julia Rosie!  We love you!
She got to invite three friends over after school for playing and movie night.  Oh the excitement level was high at our house!  :)  (Everyone but Samuel was way over excited.)
She had lots of fun at school and home so I think it was a pretty good birthday. 
She and Philip will have a party later this month, depending on if the big boys wrestle at state and what tournament they qualify for.

Such sweet friends!

You're Invited!

To our house.  And on the way, please, drink a large cup of coffee or tea or pop or whatever it is you drink because when you arrive you can ........(drumroll, please....) use our new main floor bathroom!!!!!
Here's a simplified progression:

I LOVE how it turned out!

 

We hired a local, um, "handy man" doesn't do him justice but I'm not sure what else to call him.  He worked, give or take a bit, all day, every day for two weeks, one day and a couple hours this morning.  I can only imagine how long it would have taken Jeremy trying to fit in doing it all!  Mr. Ralph finished up the dry walling, did all the mudding and sanding, laid the cement board and put in the shower walls the first week.  He also mudded and sanded the pantry and the closet under the stairs in the basement.  Over the weekend we painted, with the help of my mom.  Then last week he installed the cupboards, put in the wiring for heating the tiles, put in the countertop and sink, trimmed around the windows and doors,  and installed the shower doors, faucet and the toilet.  Plus he did lots of small details I can't remember exactly.  Thankfully he is really friendly and didn't mind when Philip and Nicholas popped their little selves in every couple hours to check on the progress.  It was worth every penny (and probably more) that we will pay him!

Here's a little more of the progression:

 His house, which he was so impressed that Mr. Ralph "made."

 

 

 The water is turned on, the towels my aunt bought me for my birthday (two years ago, but that is beside the point) are in the washer, there is toilet paper on the back of the toilet and soap by the sink so everything is usable!  There are plenty more details to finish up:  the heated tile can't be used for a couple weeks so the mortar and grout on the tile have plenty of time to cure, knobs on the cupboards, toilet paper holder and towel racks installed, touch up paint where I scraped the wall while helping with the counter, light fixture to put in, but we have all that stuff so it's just a matter of making some time to work in there.  The plan is to stack the washer and dryer and bring up the freezer but I think I'll try the washer/dryer stacked for a couple weeks to see if I like it before we bring  it up.  I also want to find a retractable clothesline to put up for hang drying things. Do they still make those?
 
There are some people who are very excited to take a shower tonight!

Um, No

Mom, I think I'll give up rest time for Lent!

This One

Is at the hilarious language stage.  I feel like he's much younger than the others at this stage but I don't' really know for sure.  Cases in point:

He announces "Addy home!" everyday when she gets here in the morning.

At the store:
N: Tape!
M: We have tape at home we don't need tape.
N:  I do!

M:  It's rest time.
N: No rest time!
M: Yep, sorry, it's time for a rest
N: No, don't make me mad! 
(Who says this at our house for him to have picked it up from?) (note:  I figured out where he got this.  The kids had/have been driving each other crazy on purpose (thank you cabin fever) so I've been saying "Don't make insert name here mad!" to them)

Why did I wait so long to get him a hair cut?!

Nicholas also loves being naked and has been requesting to run around this way at least once a day.  He very rarely has accidents so we have been half heartedly potty training as well.  (I know this is much younger than the others!)  He doesn't do very well telling me when he has to go but I can ask at the right times and he was willing to try.  After he went potty I would sing the "I'm proud of you" song from Daniel Tiger.  Except he got tired of it.  "No powd of you, mom!"  he told me when I tried to sing it the other day.
After a couple days he started to be very unwilling to try going.  Before giving up and waiting until he's a little older I decided to get some M&Ms.  They've helped a lot.  Maybe too much:
N: All done.  M & M!
M: No, you don't get an M & M for just tooting.
N: (without missing a beat and with complete confidence) Yes I do!

I was letting him cry it out in his crib after waking up in the middle of the night and being put back to bed for the third time and I hear:  "Mommy whhhy?"

And my personal favorite:
Walking into the new laundry room (more on this next week when it's done!!!!) after the cabinets had been installed he looked up at the man doing the work for us and said with as much incredulousness as a two year old can muster, "You make dis?!"
                           

The Monkey Princess

and the Monkey Bread she made mostly by herself.

Jeremy has always called Julia "Julia Monkey."  Sometime recently she sadly said to me "Daddy calls me monkey but he should call me Princess!" after I relayed the story to Jeremy "Monkey Princess" was born.  She'd still prefer plain princess but she's accepted the new name.  :)

Finally Playing in the Snow

We got our first really playable snow last week...and we were 6/7 sick (as Samuel put it).  Thomas and his nearly impenetrable immune system were overwhelmingly fine.  Everyone was starting to feel better by the time the weekend rolled around so we spent some time playing in the 50 degree weather.  The snow drifts were so tall the 50 degrees did not put too large a dent in them.

Nicholas will literally choose to stay inside over wearing boots and snowpants so he did very little outdoor playing.  We did come to a compromise and he went out for a bit in snowpants and shoes but he just wandered around and I didn't get a picture.

Yes, Another Wrestling Post

Sorry.  This was probably (don't tell them I said this, hopefully) my last tournament of the season unless someone makes it to state.  Plus the results were good!
1st place for Samuel! (Won two, lost one, got first on points)

2nd place for Philip (Won two, lost one-in overtime by only two points)

"I'm going to win two trophies, then I'll be done with trophies."  Good thing he didn't understand enough to be disappointed that he was thisclose to a trophy this week.

Here's last week and this week's medals:

And drumroll please....3rd place for Thomas!  He won a match on points.  He's been wrestling well all season but a win had eluded him until this weekend so we were extra proud of him because of his perseverance.

And now on to other  topics!

Lego Tournament FLL

The Big Boys had their First Lego League (Robotics) tournament a couple weekends ago.  Jeremy forgot his phone at home today so I finally remembered to get the pictures off of it.

Team Awesome Robot Engineers won 3rd place at their meet and a trip to the state meet later this month.

They did a big project on money management and developed a Monopoly-like game to help teach kids how to manage money. (This is about 3/4 of what a FLL team does).
They also designed attachments to Lego NXT robots to complete certain tasks in a certain amount of time (only about 1/4 of what a FLL team does).

Please don't ask me about FLL.  I don't think it's enough fun for how much work Mom the kids have to put in but the boys really like it so we do it.  

Lego Tournaments Jr FLL

Julia had her Jr. First Lego League tournament this weekend (If you're following that means we had wrestling Friday night, Jr. Legos most of the day Saturday and a big snow storm Sunday, and a snow day today.  Big weekend!)

Here are all the teams from our club.

 Since Daddy has helped with our Lego Club for 4 or 5 years now he got roped into judging the tournament. (Didn't have to judge Julia's team.  There were three sets of judges.)

 Julia's team, Team Robot, got the "Super Teamwork" award.  The teams aren't placed, each one gets and award for what they did really well.

They did a project about hospitals.  Julia was proud because the hospital was her idea and she is an expert you know, because she remembers her stay there two winters ago when she was dehydrated.

They built a model hospital.  Julia did the IV, which you can't really see in this picture.

She had lots of fun!
(You can ask me about Jr FLL because it is really fun and very different than FLL.)

Guess We're a Wrestling Family

Not sure how I feel about that.  Wrestling tournaments are long and there are a lot of disappointed boys at meets but our boys seem to really enjoy it (including Jeremy) and it's a great way to get out that pent up winter energy! 

 Here's the team 2014

Samuel in the singlet

Philip wrestled this weekend because our club hosted a tournament.  It was his first meet.  He won one match and lost two, earning him a 3rd place medal, which he proudly wore for two days.  Can't believe I didn't get a picture of him with it!  He said he had fun and might try to get another medal next week because Public is hosting their meet and that's close enough to home for Mommy to be willing to sit through PreK to 5th/6th matches.  I can go home during 1st/2nd!

M:(after he was done wrestling)  Philip, should we go get your medal?

Ph:  Yes!  I've never gotten a medal before!!!!

The three wrestlers

 Very intimidating

Someone else insisted on trying on the singlet....

 

 Philip in action

 Thomas in action

 Thomas again

Only blurry pictures of Samuel this week.